PDF to PDF reflow

alberto-cuda · 11-15-2010, 01:11 PM

Hi all,
if I correctly understand the software architecture of calibre, when a PDF document is reflowed by calibre, it is converted into XML, then back into PDF. Is there any interest in implementing a code path that avoids this two steps algorithm and (when the input format is the same as the output format) allow a plugin to take a shorthand? Do you see that as a severe violation of the design choices?

I'm asking this (sorry if this sounds as an advertisement, it's not -- completely), because I'm writing a tool that reflows PDFs (PDFlow, on Launchpad), and I think it would be nice to integrate it with calibre, in order to avoid loosing metadata and keeping the layout as close as possible to the orifinal document. I could not, however find any obvious way to do that without changing the Plugin API.

Thanks a lot, cheers.
Alberto.

kovidgoyal · 11-15-2010, 01:24 PM

You don't need to change the plugin architecture to integrate this into calibre. You just need to add special case code to plumber.py which is responsible for creating the conversion pipeline.

Basically plumber is passed in the input and output filenames and takes care of building and runing the conversion pipeline. You can have it special case the pdf-to-pdf path.

11-15-2010, 01:11 PM	#1
alberto-cuda Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Bookeen	PDF to PDF reflow Hi all, if I correctly understand the software architecture of calibre, when a PDF document is reflowed by calibre, it is converted into XML, then back into PDF. Is there any interest in implementing a code path that avoids this two steps algorithm and (when the input format is the same as the output format) allow a plugin to take a shorthand? Do you see that as a severe violation of the design choices? I'm asking this (sorry if this sounds as an advertisement, it's not -- completely), because I'm writing a tool that reflows PDFs (PDFlow, on Launchpad), and I think it would be nice to integrate it with calibre, in order to avoid loosing metadata and keeping the layout as close as possible to the orifinal document. I could not, however find any obvious way to do that without changing the Plugin API. Thanks a lot, cheers. Alberto.

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11-15-2010, 01:24 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,857 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	You don't need to change the plugin architecture to integrate this into calibre. You just need to add special case code to plumber.py which is responsible for creating the conversion pipeline. Basically plumber is passed in the input and output filenames and takes care of building and runing the conversion pipeline. You can have it special case the pdf-to-pdf path.